How MassMutual Ventures keeps track of contacts, deal flow, pipeline, vendors, and other critical information with Affinity

Introduction

MassMutual Ventures (MMV) is a $250M venture fund focused on enterprise software and financial technology. It is the corporate venture capital arm of MassMutual, a Fortune 500 insurance company.

‍
Last year, as part of an effort to tap into the latest technology to help them leverage and manage their various complex relationships, MassMutual Ventures chose Affinity over Salesforce as their CRM. Contrary to Salesforce, Affinity was set up in less than 30 days and implemented within 60 days, with wall-to-wall email and AWS integration.

Challenge

As a part of a 10,000+ person organization, MassMutual Ventures is replete with institutional knowledge. Prior to Affinity, MassMutual Ventures' venture arm struggled to keep track of contacts, deal flow, pipeline, vendors, and other critical information.  Additionally, the teams were highly siloed in terms of relationships with its portfolio companies. 

Solution

MassMutual Ventures chose Affinity over Salesforce as their CRM. Affinity’s lists have been transformative in terms of helping MassMutual Ventures consolidate and centralize information and make it visible to all members of the global organizations. 

MMV leverages Affinity lists for six primary use cases

1. To track its investment pipeline as a team.
2. To track its portfolio companies and log board meeting notes.
3. To track its recruiting and talent pipeline that may be valuable to portfolio companies.
4. To track its communication with external venture funds.
5. To log the MassMutual Ventures organization hierarchy and track internal contacts.
6. To log business development contacts.

“Within weeks of moving to Affinity, we were able to easily discover and manage the 1,000s of entrepreneur and venture community relationships already latent within our team. What’s more, the Affinity Alliances professional network has helped us quickly build new & valuable connections.” - Eric Emmons, Managing Director at MassMutual Ventures

Results

Thanks to Affinity, MassMutual Ventures was able to instantly surface email communications with 20,000 individuals across 3,400 organizations over the past four years. All team members now have insight into the context and status of relationships with portfolio companies. MassMutual Ventures has also been able to leverage Affinity’s Alliance feature to uncover existing relationships with entrepreneurs that need nurturing.